by S A Asthana
But as they often did for Bastien, things worsened.
A poster plastered not far from the nailed corpse read, “Wanted: Lieutenant General Bastien Lyons. This 6-foot man murdered 5 colleagues in the Martian armed forces. Reward of ¥400,000 if caught. Proceed with caution—outlaw is dangerous. Report to local authorities upon capture. Notable trait: bright yellow irises.” Bastien pulled the shawl further up his nose. Unbelievable. It was as if being woken violently from a sweet dream—to have gone from a lauded military career one second to being on the run from the law the next. The screams of the dying men reverberated deep within his mind, but he shut them away.
“Life’s not fair,” Bastien muttered in English accented with slight French tones. The tones popped up from time to time despite his best efforts, especially when anger overtook his emotions. The French accent, once one of mankind’s most beautiful linguistic intonations, was now a mark of shame because of its affiliation with this hellish place. Bastien couldn’t get rid of it no matter how hard he tried. Not even ten years away from this city had done the trick.
This very trait would help him melt into the scenery. A saving grace, one that served to remind of his roots. And his love and hate relationship with New Paris. As much as Bastien disliked the city, a part of him was glad to be back. It was home. A familiar evil. And his sole connection to Father Paul.
He pushed through a packed tunnel and headed for West district. It housed slums—squalor that could be disappeared into. According to whispers they were less patrolled than the market. Their filth was a major deterrent. A sign, slime green and rectangular and pointed at one end, hung against the wall—Avenue Montaigne. Bastien scoffed at the Queen’s attempt to mirror this colony with its predecessor. The iconic avenue had been a chic pathway of material pleasures in Paris’ heyday. Calling a sewer tunnel by the same name was just sacrilegious. Perhaps she should focus on cleaning up the pigsty rather than decorating it.
Bastien arrived in West district and slipped and fell in mud. What an entrance! Men and women laughed around him. So much for keeping a low profile. New Paris clearly reciprocated the love and hate relationship. Sure, it would cloak him but there’d be some fun at his expense along the way. Bastien stood with a grunt and wiped sludge off his cheeks.
Tattered shacks spread away ahead, trash piled high at their entryways and covered in flies. The district’s primary chamber was a large, rectangular space with a curved ceiling crisscrossed by pipes. Frail women worked their way towards a small hole in the corner to empty buckets of excrement. Gangs of spindly children ran alongside chickens and goats like playful skeletons. Men of all ages sat about slack-jawed, eyeing the slippery muck before them and searching for hope.
The place smelled like it looked. Fetid. If hell were real, this was it. These people, neglected and forgotten, deserved better. Now that he was back, perhaps Bastien could do some good here once things settled down—focus on saving, not just surviving. These Parisians would benefit from a shoulder to cry on. All that was needed was a will. After all, that’s all Father Paul had at his disposal when he’d started the orphanage. Bastien could do the same. He’d be the balance—the heaven to this hell.
A most decrepit figure, a girl of no more than fifteen, lay half-naked not far from him. She was in the throes of a merciless death—a death that could only be brought on by overdosing on the most addictive narcotic ever produced by humans. One human, specifically. Euphoria was a product of the Queen’s mind, her red powdered gift to humanity. The story went that she’d crafted the drug while only a young princess during one of her many mental breakdowns. Supposedly she’d used her own blood as an ingredient, hence the powder’s color. But that was conjecture, imaginations in the absence of information. Upon ascending the throne, she’d mass-produced it until it was the most coveted high in the Solar System. Addiction, ‘chasing the red comet’ as the local slang termed it, came at high cost. The chances of an overdose were great but the thrills were supposedly worth it. Addicts claimed it made them feel like a rocket ship. Bastien didn’t know what he found more appalling, the girl’s condition or the fact that nobody had come to her aid. If only there were something I could do. He was primed to help others. It burned when he couldn’t. But, at least, he could pray for her. “I commend you, my dear sister, to almighty God and entrust you to—”
“Gotcha, fucker.” He was lifted off the floor and thrown into a wall. It happened so fast he ended up eating bricks. Stars burst into his eyes. But despite the pain he stood quickly. Years of combat training triggered his body into response mode. He found himself face to face with the three bounty hunters. They were a lot more persistent than he’d hoped. A big bounty.
Bastien was cornered against a wall. He had no choice but to fight. The surrounding crowd pulled away to form a semicircle and watched with sadistic pleasure. Anything to forget their day-to-day lives. Children pointed gleefully and men made quick bets with one another. Free entertainment was always welcome, especially the kind involving blood.
The three men rushed him. With seasoned skill Bastien took a boxing stance, legs placed shoulder-width apart and bent slightly at the knees, hands up in front of the face and curled into fists. A familiar surge of adrenaline sprang him into action.
A swirling tornado of roundhouse kicks and elbow strikes followed. Bastien’s speed, his attacks, and deflections inspired a collective gasp from the crowd. Gone was the fleeing gazelle, now replaced by a lion. The physicality on display was a beautiful, deadly ballet. A dance that ended no sooner than it had started. Three dead bodies lay scattered, all with broken limbs and twisted necks.
The crowd was stunned into silence. Their nasty stares spoke volumes. Few had made money, but most lost an entire day’s earnings. Clearly, he wasn’t making any friends. The men and children dispersed back to their sad lives.
Bastien scrambled to his feet, veins bulging in his forearms. Three more kills to add to his murderous streak. He prayed in a whisper, “Give them, Lord, your peace and let your eternal light shine upon them.” Taking a human life was always the last resort. Even on military missions, he’d killed only once—also when there’d been no other recourse. Hostage situations often ended in such a manner. His aversion to killing had been noted by his Martian peers and superiors. He’d been defined a virtuous soldier, a man with the weakness of compassion. A rare Parisian.
Father Paul had always said, “Remember Exodus 20:13. Thou shall not murder.” A straightforward message. The good father would follow with, “Just because we are surrounded by monsters doesn’t mean we have to become monsters ourselves.” Made sense then. But not so much now. Where he had executed only one kill in twenty-eight years, now there were eight more in just five days.
How far the righteous do fall.
Maybe Father Paul, while right about most things, had had this one wrong. Could it be true men had no choice but to become monsters to survive in a world full of monsters? The way things were going for Bastien, he was inclined to believe the answer was yes.
He inspected the hunters, going through pockets and holsters of the corpses. Most bounty hunters carried weapons—unfortunately, these guys didn’t. What kind of bounty hunter goes without arms, even simple daggers? No wonder they were dead. Bastien was unstoppable in hand to hand combat. Being muscular, fast, and skilled made him formidable.
Nonetheless, he still needed something more to defend himself. That bounty wasn’t going away. And without weapons, he’d lose soon. Perhaps he could buy one of the knives for sale back in the market. He turned his pockets inside out. Nothing but lint. Once a poor orphan, always a poor orphan.
Bastien brushed dirt off his black hair but froze when a familiar sound echoed in his ears. It was the click of a single action pistol. Unmistakable. He’d taken the safety off plenty of them. This one sounded used, like that click had been followed by bang numerous times before. A knot formed in his stomach. Running away and hiding was not an option.
A thick voice bar
ked, “You are under arrest by orders of Queen Marie, our one true God. Resist her, and you die. Comply, and you live.” The voice smelled like rat meat. A pistol’s barrel pressed hard into the back of Bastien’s head. Several black uniformed men stood in his peripheral vision. Loups. Wolves—the omnipresent Parisian soldiers.
The fight and its commotion must have caught their eye. So much for blending in. With a long sigh, Bastien raised his hands into the air. The decision to come back here was a mistake. Nippon One would have been a better bet than New Paris.
CHAPTER 2: CUBE
If Bastien Lyons had been hiding out in Nippon One, Cube would have hunted him down by now. After all, that’s what the robot did. Hunt, kill, erase. The seven-foot-tall humanoid machine, a bulky yet highly flexible gunmetal black monster with no other markings besides a barcode on the back of the head, stood atop the edge of a hundred-story building and scanned the bustling metropolis below. A cyclops eye, deep red and swollen like a clot of blood, was centered on its skeleton face. A walking nightmare.
Nippon One’s soaring skyscrapers spread away to the horizon in every direction. Bright lights and neon signs littered the scene—Mitsubishi Bank, Toyota Space Corporation. A corporate playground. Nippon One, the single human colony on the Earth’s moon, was a soup of steel, concrete, and glass. It was built from the ground up with resources abundant in the lunar soil like iron, aluminum, magnesium, titanium, and silicon. The city appeared a motherboard, a piece of hardware running through its pre-programmed processes, its roads crisscrossing as if they were electrical conduits connecting buildings, the towering processing units.
A large glass dome encapsulated it all, keeping the colony’s denizens secure from the deadly lunar atmosphere. The sturdy magnetically charged surface had scratches etched all over—deflecting micrometeoroids had taken a toll. But it stood strong, allowing for humanity to continue.
Amongst it all, thousands of conversations, all a mix of Japanese and English, played out concurrently, and Cube’s listening apparatus picked up each and every one. The city was speckled with artificially intelligent assistants, or personal robots, all with the ability to listen and converse with their owners. They were easy to hack, at least for a machine like Cube. It could hear conversations through the assistants’ listening devices. And by way of a wireless uplink to Martian databases, it could compare the sound bites against a stored voice recording of Bastien.
> TARGET ID = 22345655
> TARGET NAME = Bastien Lyons
> TARGET MATCH AGAINST {VOICE 10345} = FALSE
> LOOP Scan.exe
There were zero audio matches so far. Its eye’s lenses zoomed in and out on surrounding buildings one by one, their thermo-optic capabilities picking up human heat signatures behind walls. Using the same uplink, the markers were matched against stored images of Bastien.
> TARGET ID = 22345655
> TARGET NAME = Bastien Lyons
> TARGET MATCH AGAINST {SIGNATURE 000450} = FALSE
> LOOP Scan.exe
Again, zero matches. Cube had combed every alley, every dark corner of this city. It was clear Bastien Lyons was not in Nippon One. It had been an unsuccessful two-day hunt. The next destination was clear.
Earth loomed large against a starlit backdrop, the planet now nothing more than a shell of its former self. World War Three had reduced it to an unimaginable degree. There were no cotton puffs or white streaks crisscrossing the continents as depicted in thousands of ancient JPEG files across Martian databases. Instead, ochre landmasses remained visible in entirety, including Antarctica’s rocky terrain. Their shores, now much more inland, cut against dark blue seas. The probability of Bastien hiding out in humanity’s birthplace was high.
A text message flashed in Cube’s peripheral vision, floating in the air as if a feather.
>HOLOGRAM COMMUNICATION UPLOADING
>STANDBY
The machine walked back to the center of the roof, its heavy feet stomping on concrete, as a pixelated figure materialized in its vision. A red uniformed specter floated just ahead. With his hands at his waist, the three-dimensional hologram asked in a gravelly, matter of fact tone, “Status?”
Cube responded in baritone, “Negative. Bastien removed his standard issue military-tracking device. He is off the radar.” The words emanated from where a mouth should have been—a tiny speaker built inconspicuously in the metal chin.
The translucent ghost, a broad-shouldered man, let out an exasperated sigh, the brass stars across his coat dangling haphazardly. He spat, “It’s almost been a week, Cube! I can’t have him running around the Solar System.”
“General Crone, I assure you he will be found.” Cube did its best to mimic the human tone indicative of confidence, but as always, sounded monotone. The voice could be reading aloud a textbook on data recovery or leading a platoon into war and it would sound exactly the same. An apropos byproduct of Port Sydney—cold, metallic. “I am ninety-nine percent sure he has left this city.”
“Well, brilliant! Care to fill me in on where he is then?”
“New Paris.”
“Goddammit!” The Martian General threw his arms up, his thick jaw jutting out, his long nose crinkling. Cube assessed him. If he were shapes, his head would be a regular quadrilateral, his body an inverted isosceles triangle.
“I have checked every prefecture in this city and converged with local authorities, General. They’ve all asserted that he never came here. So—”
“When are you heading down there?” the man interrupted, a stray, white lock dangling over his stone grey eyes.
“Right after our conversation concludes.” Cube nodded.
“I will send a comm down to Marie immediately to ensure she assists you. I need this handled in the next few days. I can’t deflect much longer. The High Council demands answers. So, make it happen fast, or there will be consequences.” General Crone slammed a fist into his left hand. “I don’t keep you operational to play chase. I expect you to catch, understood? That’s why you are autonomous. I will check back in two days.” He saluted. “For the High Council.”
Cube straightened its back, its thick arms down by the sides, and echoed Port Sydney’s maxim, “For the High Council.”
“Feed out.” The General’s last words were garbled. His image broke apart into countless pixels before disappearing altogether.
Cube stood still for ten seconds. There will be consequences. The warning repeated inside the memory banks. Machines that failed the General, and more importantly the High Council, were remotely shut down. Martian military protocol. And there were never exceptions. The iron, merciless fist of the High Council didn’t budge. That’s how quality remained high.
A distraction presented itself—muffled music played gently in Cube’s listening apparatus. It was familiar.
Piano keys.
Cube focused its listening to 30 degrees north of east. Someone was playing the instrument deep within this concrete jungle. The melody was recognizable. Beethoven’s Fur Elise was a piece of music Cube had listened to countless times. The classic symphony’s notes danced in Cube’s audio unit, filling the processors with bits and bytes that denoted piano keys. If machines could feel pure joy, this would be it. The code that kicked in deep within its modules generated an indescribable feeling, or at least what the machine conjectured to be a feeling.
> EMOTION = happiness.dat
Cube understood the symphony’s technical details well. The rondo form. The main section, termed A, appeared three times. Between these three sections there were two other sections, B and C, so the form of the piece was A B A C A. Cube could play the music. But it could never deviate and innovate on those notes. A shortcoming of its programming. Humans had a way with music—something artificial intelligence had never been able to replicate. There was something untouchable about those notes. Beautiful, yet unattainable somehow.
Cube’s right fingers, metal sausages, danced and moved across an imaginary piano. The song’s ma
in section had a time signature of 3/8. It was based on arpeggios that flew from one hand to the other. The left fingers joined in the dance. Cube’s intense fixation for this particular piece of music was a mystery. Perhaps it was the output of machine learning—the robot’s experiences over time somehow having led down this particular path of obsession. Or perhaps the interest had been there all along, in the original code. The coder might have had an affinity for the classics. The puzzle would never be solved.
The symphony ended abruptly.
Whoever was playing was done. Footsteps faded—the musician walking away from the piano. The cacophony of cars honking and sirens blaring returned.
> COMMAND = STOP. happiness.dat
Cube walked over to the edge of the roof and stared down at the city. Nipponese citizens were ants swarming the streets and alleys, each one an unexpected second away from death—if the oxygen and gravity plates spanning underneath Nippon One were shut off, there would be havoc. The lunar settlement would expire within seconds.
